Pael receptor, endoplasmic reticulum stress, and Parkinson's disease

Autosomal recessive juvenile parkinsonism (AR-JP) is caused by mutations of the parkin gene. Parkin is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that specifically recognizes its substrate protein, promoting its ubiquitination and subsequent degradation. Accordingly, we hypothesized that AR-JP may be caused by accumulation of an unidentified neurotoxic protein, which is a substrate of Parkin. Based on this hypothesis, we cloned parkin-binding protein using a yeast two-hybrid system and identified a putative G protein-coupled receptor protein, which we named the Pael receptor (Pael-R). When overexpressed in cells, this receptor became unfolded, insoluble, and ubiquitinated. Accumulation of the insoluble Pael-R subsequently led to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-induced cell death. Parkin specifically ubiquitinates the unfolded Pael-R and promotes its degradation, resulting in suppression of cell death induced by the accumulation of unfolded Pael-R. Moreover, insoluble Pael-R accumulates in the brains of AR-JP patients. It is highly expressed by the dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra, strongly suggesting that accumulation of unfolded Pael-R may lead to selective death of dopaminergic neurons in AR-JP. Recently, we identified Hsp70 and its co-chaperone CHIP as novel Parkin-binding partners. We found that CHIP enhanced Parkin-mediated ubiquitination of Pael-R. In concert with Hsp70, CHIP also enhanced the ability of Parkin to inhibit cell death induced by Pael-R, indicating that CHIP and Hsp70 are both co-factors of parkin.